started oryx pro review

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+Laptops preloaded with Linux aren't a rare as they used to be. In fact big name hardware companies like Dell have whole lines of laptops that ship with Ubuntu installed, and if you want to stretch things a bit you could argue that a Chromebook is a kind of Linux machine, though it takes a bit of tinkering to get actual Linux installed. 
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+What remains unusual even in the midst of what looks like a growing interest in PCs shipping Linux is companies that sell nothing else. There are a handful that do though and have for some time. System 76 is perhaps the best known of these and for good reason -- the offer increadibly powerful Linux machines with more customization options than most manufacturers offer for any system, no matter what OS it ships with.
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+System 76 has a decent range of latptops, from the small, lightweight, battery sipping Lemur to some mid range options with better performance to the top end beast-like Oryx Pro.
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+After reviewing the svelte, but not necessarily most powerful Dell XPS 13, I got curious about System 76's Oryx Pro. On paper it sounds like a desktop machine somehow packed into a laptop form factor. If money were not object and you wanted the most of everyting you could pack in to an Oryx system you'd end up with a 6th Generation Intel i7-6820HK CPU, and GTX 1070 GPU, 64GB of RAM, a rediculous 9TB worth of hard drive and an 15.6 or 17.3 IPS. You'd end up with a desktop machine packed into a dark, brushed aluminum alloy shell that still manages to fit in your backpack. It would set you back almost $7000, but hey, with massive power comes a massive price tag.
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+If you wanted a portable video editing workstation or a gaming machines you can take with you wherever you go you'd be hard pressed to find more impressive specs from any manufacturer, let alone one that ships with Linux-compatible hardware like System 76.
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+When I mentioned to System 76 that I wanted to test the Oryx Pro and compare it to the Dell XPS as a "developer:" laptop they were a little hesitant, pointing out that the two are really -- aside from both shipping with Ubuntu installed -- pretty much nothing alike. It wasn't until the Oryx Pro arrived though that I really understood just how different they were.
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+## The Hardware
+
+The Oryx Pro that System 76 sent for me to test was not the fully maxed out model, but it did have the tk chip, 16GB of RAM and a 256GB SSD. As configured it would set you back $tk. Even without the max hard drive space and nowhere near the max RAM the Oryx Pro was incredibly powerful, but that's not the first things that jumps out at you when the Oryx Pro arrives. Once you get past the very clever, minimalist packaging the most striking thing about the Oryx Pro is holy crap this thing is massive.
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+Like most computer users these days I've been programmed to think laptop should be just slighly thicker than my phone, weight about the same as my paper notebook and be no larger than an 8x11 sheet of paper. There is of course no reason to expect this beyond the fact that that's the expectation marketing comapigns have created. If you chuck those expectations out the window, you end up with, yes, a much larger laptop, but also a much more capable laptop.
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+While the size of the Oryx Pro is shocking at first, especiall when you pull out the Dell XPS 13 and put them next to each other, it's really not that big. Nor is it that heavy considering what you get. Weighing in at 5.5lbs for 15.6" version, the Oryx Pro is heavy, but not back breakingly so. It does do better in backpack than a shoulder bag, but if that's the biggest compromise I have to make to get a portable video editing workstation, I'll take it.
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+So yes, the System 76 folks were right, the Oryx Pro doesn't stack up all that well next to the Dell XPS 13 when it comes to size, weight and sveltness. If those are your criteria then the Dell XPS is what you want. If you want power though, the Oryx Pro blows the Dell out of the water, especially when you start looking at RAM capacity, which tops out at 16GB for the XPS 13.
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+The Oryx Pro is not, despite it's size and heft, ungainly. In fact its quite svelt and nicely understanded design. 
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+There is one downright ungainly thing about the Oryx Pro pro though -- the power brick. The power brick is ridiculously huge, about double the size of any power brick I've ever seen. It's also worth noting that it adds tk lbs to the total weight of the Oryx Pro. And you're going to want that powerbrick with you if you plan to work for more than a couple hours because of course, with great power comes great power consumption.
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+Exactly how much battery life you get out of the Oryx Pro will obviously vary according to what you're doing with it. I happened to have a video editing job that coincided with having the Oryx Pro so I loaded up both tk and Lightworks and when crunching video, as you'd expect, battery life suffers. I still managed to get about 3 hours out of the battery, even running an editor, though that dropped more when actually exporting the edit to the final mp4 file.
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+I got similar results running tk and tk. 
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+I will admit upfront that I am not a gamer, but I did test tk and several other high-end graphics intensive games like tk and tk and discovered just how impressive top end NVidia hardware actually is. If you're looking for a portable gaming machine, the Oryx Pro delivers.
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+I gave the tk card a workout editing 4K video as well and it was similarly impressive, however, quite frankly, 16GB of RAM is just not enough for editing video. So performance did suffer a bit, particularly with Kdenlive, though it's hard to say whether this was a result of software, lack of RAM, the graphics card or something in Ubuntu.
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+## Software
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+## Conclusion
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+At the end of the day the Oryx Pro is quite simply more computer than I need. I'm a writer. Nearly everything I do is done using a combination of Vim and Firefox. I like to think I might edit video, indeed I have edited video in the past